Lawmakers Overrule Stupid Voters Who Thought They Could Legalize Marijuana

Oh, you silly voters! Back in November, you voted yes in eight states to defy marijuana prohibition. Obviously, you ill-informed citizens didn’t know what you were doing, and now you need the benevolent and prudent interference of us, your state lawmakers.

Gee, what’s the hurry, Massachusetts?

You voters in Massachusetts passed full-on legalization of marijuana, thinking it would go into effect January 1, 2018. How wicked dumb are you people?

This isn’t like how we lawmakers implemented regulations to deal with an entirely new industry of electronic ride-sharing a full year ahead of schedule. That was just ensuring criminal background checks across state and federal databases for thousands of independent drivers working unpredictable schedules for one or more multi-national online ride-sharing services—easy peasy.

What you’re taking about is annually licensing about 75 growers, processors and retailers of marijuana statewide! The devil’s lettuce! Luckily for you, Massholes, we got together in the middle of the night in a barely-mentioned special session and pushed back the implementation of the law by another six months. This is for your own good, Bay State!

Maine thinks cannabis is a plant!

Farther north in Maine, you thought that the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry should oversee regulating legalized marijuana, as if cannabis were an agricultural product. Amateurs! How fortunate that the august and wise Gov. LePage issued an order transferring control to the Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations.

And again, what’s the rush, people? You act as if buying black market weed for a while longer is somehow dangerous. We did you a favor and pushed back your legal marijuana retail in Maine by three months for you.

California’s only had about 20 years to prepare!

Out west in California, it’s almost as if you thought after 20 years of a quasi-legal medical marijuana system, the Golden State was primed and ready to begin selling marijuana out of storefronts (legally).

You all thought that just because the legalization initiative was based on the language in the medical marijuana regulations we passed in 2015 that it would be a breeze for us to implement it. Clearly, you don’t know how government works, as we’re mulling the idea of pushing back the January 1, 2018, deadline like Massachusetts has.

Nevada weed isn’t expensive enough!

Next door in the Silver State, you brain-damaged Nevada voters passed marijuana legalization, even though your governor, like all good lawmakers, was against it.

But now that you defied his wisdom by passing it, he’s decided that the 15 percent excise tax you placed on marijuana plus the existing eight percent sales tax means marijuana won’t cost enough, so he is proposing adding another 10 percent tax on top of that.

North Dakota is clueless on medical marijuana!

Then, there is the disaster to be averted up in North Dakota. You simple-minded voters in the Roughrider State foolishly thought that patients of all ages ought to have affordable access to medical marijuana as soon as possible!

Without us lawmakers pushing back the roll out of dispensaries to July, we wouldn’t have the time to fix all your egregious mistakes, like reducing the three ounce limit you passed down to 2.5 ounces, lengthening the time between selling you those 2.5 ounces from 14 days to 30 days, raising the patient card fee from $25 to $300, raising the dispensary license fee from $5,000 to $100,000, eliminating smoked marijuana as an option for adults, limiting children to only cannabis oil and changing the ban on home growing from anywhere within 40 miles of a dispensary to just plain anywhere.

Thank goodness you naïve voters have us compassionate and thoughtful lawmakers here to show you how to legalize marijuana the right way. Without us, low-priced legal marijuana would be available at retail outlets too soon, it would help far too many sick and disabled people and it would be too easy for entrepreneurs to get into the industry.